Specialising in Australian Soundtrack Recordings

1M1 Records Newsletter
April, 2002

Contents
 ********************
  - Welcome
  - April New Release
  - Recent Soundtrack Additions to the Website
  - The 1M1 Records Website
  - New and Upcoming Releases
  - Recent Scoring Assignments
  - Awards
 ********************

Welcome

Welcome to 1M1 Records' April newsletter. As 1M1 Records moves into its third month on the internet, the response has still been great, with many visitors and customers. Thanks again for those who have taken the time to do so, and to those have who emailed me with thoughts, ideas and suggestions. Particularly, thanks to those who have had some good ideas about projects that 1M1 Records could well do in the future.

Late February and March has been extraordinarily busy. Not only has the website been busy but so have I with negotiations for the licensing of several Australian soundtracks which will be released over the next few months, which will be announced shortly.

Fortunately, the site hasn't had any difficulties that we know of during this last month with regard to navigation around the site, or the use of the secure area for payment details. If anyone has had any problems with using the site, ordering or submitting your details, please email me immediately so that I can correct whatever the problem may be.

Bruce Smeaton's score "The Missing" is still doing particularly well and the feedback has all been very encouraging. One of our regulars, Frank Lehmann from the U.S., sent his opinion to me in an email which couldn't have been better if I had written it myself. He calls it, "A real winner!" He also writes: "I find 'The Missing' to be a wonderful recording (I suspect that I will not have the opportunity to see the film here in the States) - this score is quite a showcase for Smeaton's talent. The range of music, styles, and techniques is considerable - always anchored by melody. Special praise is due the orchestrator, who did a superb job as well, and the recording quality is outstanding."

It is high praise indeed, but the praise is deservedly reserved for the composer, his longtime recording engineer, Robin Gray, and the Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra. For those who haven't taken the plunge yet on "The Missing" and "The Pickwick Papers" soundtracks, I don't think you'll be disappointed. These two releases and "Roxanne and other Film and Television Themes by Bruce Smeaton" are still available, and can be found at the Current Releases page.

Customers have also responded well to 1M1 making available four film scores by Australian composers on other Australian labels, and so this month we have also added another couple of Australian scores to the catalogue at the More Releases and Secondhand page.

Frank Lehmann also informs me in another email that he's been letting people at the Filmus-L film music newsgroup know that 1M1 is now up and running on the internet. So special thanks to Frank and those many others who have been spreading the word about 1M1's new internet website.

1M1 Records' new release this month is "The Celluloid Heroes". This is one of the highlights of 1M1 Records entire output of Australian film scores. This brilliant 56-minute score composed by Nigel Westlake is performed by the full resources of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with additions in several areas. This release contains a full range of orchestral musical genres, as Nigel moves through every conceivable scenario, from chases to love scenes, and slapstick to heavenly choirs. This CD features the complete score for "The Celluloid Heroes" and shows why Nigel Westlake is amongst the top three or four composers currently writing music for Australian feature films. In between his career as a composer for the concert hall, and as a performing artist, he has managed to find time to forge quite a career as a film composer, moving between feature films and documentaries with consumate ease. His latest scores include the IMAX film "Solarmax", and during the last two weeks he has completed recording and mixing his score for the new Bill Bennett film, "The Nugget". His other scores of note have been for three IMAX films, "The Edge", "Imagine" and "Antarctica", and the feature film scores, "Babe", "Children of the Revolution", "Babe: Pig in the City" and "A Little Bit of Soul".

Also in this month's newsletter is information about Australian awards, about what is new on the website this month, and upcoming releases.

We look forward to seeing you back here for May's newsletter. Your feedback is welcome. info@1m1.com.au

Philip Powers.

April New Release

"The Celluloid Heroes" is a remarkable score, moving between many different styles and rhythms. It's full of gusto, with numerous melodies, which just keep coming and coming, track after track. This is one of the highlights of 1M1 Records' entire output of scores. I have been wanting to put this score out for 8 years now, and after several months of painstaking negotiations, and logistical roadblocks, finally it has all come together.

Who are the Celluloid Heroes?

Well, in August 1896, way across the world from where the Lumiere Brothers had launched the birth of cinema 8 months previously, something amazing was happening to the colonists in Australia. Carl Hertz, an American magician, brought to them, the first movies these young Australians ever saw, screening at the Melbourne Opera House.

A few months later, footage was filmed of what was and still is Australia's most famous sporting event, a horse race called "The Melbourne Cup". Marius Sestier, an agent of the Lumiere Brothers in Australia, was the man who managed to do this.

A few years later, on September 19, 1900, the Melbourne Town Hall was packed to its rafters by four thousand people eager to see something they'd never seen before - a multi-media presentation of slides, hymns, sermons and moving pictures, put together by the Salvation Army. This 'show' was called "Soldiers of the Cross", and it is now known to be the first major success of a fledgling film industry that 102 years later has just had another film nominated for a Best Film Oscar. The industry started strongly and built to a strong point in the 1940s before dwindling away to next to nothing for over twenty years. Then came the renaissance in the later 1960s and early 1970s. The names that are synonymous with this renewed film industry are still the names that are making films all over the world, in every conceivable department, in every nook and cranny. Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi, Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, Phillip Noyce and more recently Jane Camnpion, Scott Hicks and Baz Luhrmann are some of the directors who have forged lasting careers throughout Europe and the United States. Actors, Cinematographers, Assistant Directors, Costume Designers and Art Directors are all working in these roles.

Mel Gibson made his name with "Mad Max", and Judy Davis and Sam Neill came to the world's attention in "My Brilliant Career", and then these and other young directors and actors went back and forth between Australia and the rest of the world, and in what seems now like the blink of an eye, Sam Neill was starring in "Jurassic Park", Phillip Noyce was directing Harrison Ford in "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger", Geoffrey Rush was collecting an Academy Award for Best Actor in "Shine", and Mel Gibson was accepting an Oscar for "Braveheart".

"The Celluloid Heroes" is a 4-hour film that looks at that entire journey. A collaboration between Film Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation provided a large symphony orchestra for the important job of performing Nigel Westlake's score. Here in the underscoring is the part that voices and sound didn't play for nearly 30 years. Evident also in the music is the wonderful exuberance of motion picture filmmaking as the industry grew in strength. The film is about the triumph of self-determination and courage. The music is about achieving something that is first-rate and world-class.

Recent Soundtrack Additions to the Website

This month we've got three new Australian soundtrack additions to the site. The first is the Geffen soundtrack for "Babe: Pig in the City" with tracks by Nigel Westlake and the soundtrack from Bruce Beresford's moving film "Paradise Road", including original cues by composer Ross Edwards as well as the wonderful choral cues from the film. These are in the secondhand section, and there is just one of each available. "The Potato Factory" score by Carl Vine is also available in the More Soundtracks section. We have a few copies of this elegant orchestral score in stock, and should be able to get more copies if there is the demand.

The 1M1 Records Website

http://www.1m1.com.au/ was launched on 21st January, 2002. The 1M1 Records website has:

Current Releases; which are still being manufactured.

http://www.1m1.com.au/current.html

More Soundtracks; previously released titles which are still available, including titles previously released by 1M1 Records which are no longer being manufactured, and brand new CDs of other soundtracks which 1M1 has in its stocks, like "The Lighthorsemen" and "Second Time Lucky", and a range of other scores. "Rentacop", however, is not available anymore and neither is John Scott's "Lionheart" or his Cousteau documentary scores. Other scores by Bruce Broughton, Michael Kamen, Georges Delerue and Pino Donaggio are still available, and just a few copies are left of John Scott conducting suites of music from favourite film scores of his own. There are still a couple of copies left of the brilliant double CD of film themes by Ennio Morricone written between 1966 and 1987.

http://www.1m1.com.au/more.html

Collectors Items; rare 1M1 CDs priced in the premium range because of the difficulty in sourcing them, containing 1M1 CDs like "Devil in the Flesh / We of the Never Never", "Roadgames / Patrick", "Race for the Yankee Zephyr / The Survivor" and "Harlequin / The Day After Halloween": items which have very few soundtracks left in stock and are quite unlikely to become available again in the foreseeable future. Some of the one-off titles available here last month such as the original CD release of Bernard Herrmann's "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "High Spirits" are unavailable. We may have access to other copies of these CDs in the future and will let you know in this space, if and when. Jerry Goldsmith's "The Blue Max" and "The Cassandra Crossing" are still available, as are some other interesting titles.

http://www.1m1.com.au/collectors.html

Secondhand Titles; soundtrack releases from anywhere in the world which 1M1 currently has in stock, containing quite a few bargain-priced excellent condition soundtrack CDs for sale. Current titles include mint condition copies of Max Steiner's "King Kong" (the re-recording conducted by Fred Steiner), and a CD of "The Film Music of Gerard Schurmann: Horrors of the Black Museum". "Gremlins 2" and "Jane Eyre" are also available here. More titles will be added to this section as the page is further compiled and updated each month. There is only one copy of many of these titles, however, so not all orders will be able to be filled immediately.

http://www.1m1.com.au/secondhand.html

New and Upcoming Releases

"The Celluloid Heroes"
http://www.1m1.com.au/1M1CD1025.html

Nigel Westlake's fabulous orchestral score for this film on the history of the Australian film industry, "The Celluloid Heroes" is out this month. "Annie's Coming Out" (USA: "A Test of Love") and "The Last of the Mohicans" are still scheduled for release later in the year, and along with an expanded CD release of "A Town Like Alice", with extra music not previously available, will be a release of Bruce Smeaton's score for "The Earthling". A score by Brian May which has only ever been released on vinyl is coming soon as well, and several scores by Peter Best, the composer of "Crocodile Dundee", will be available very shortly. Currently we are in the process of restoring his previously unreleased orchestral score for the Cannes Film Festival and AFI Award winning film, "Bliss".

Recent Scoring Assignments

Mario Millo's score for "Heroes' Mountain" has been well-received by the public and the film screened recently on the Channel Ten Network in Australia, winning its rating slot all around Australia in all but one city. This incredible story has attracted so much interest and so many viewers that it knocked off a first-run Sean Connery film, "Entrapment", and also out-rated another blockbuster with Harrison Ford on another channel. Logies and AFI Awards are anticipated for many involved, including producer Anthony Buckley, director Peter Andrikidis, and Mario Millo for his score. 1M1 Records has this currently slated for release in the next couple of months.

Nigel Westlake has just finished recording and mixing the music for "The Nugget", a new Australian film due for release later this year.

Awards

Recently the 2002 Academy Awards were presented in Los Angeles. Australia had numerous industry veterans nominated for Oscars, both in "Moulin Rouge" and the New Zealand-based "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring". 3 Oscars were won by Australians in all and although both films were nominated for Best Picture, it was the John Nash bio-pic "A Beautiful Mind" that picked up the highest honour, along with director Ron Howard. As MC Whoopi Goldberg noted wryly in her offhand remarks along the way, "Moulin Rouge" was a film that didn't have a director, with Baz Luhrmann missing out on a nomination for a film that apparently directed itself, despite being nominated in most other categories. New Zealander Peter Jackson apparently did direct "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" (he was nominated for it), but "In the Bedroom" also was a directorless film according to the nominating members of the Academy.

Russell Crowe, another (New Zealand) Australian also missed out on Best Actor, despite being the favourite by far, given that "something"-challenged characters invariably win their actors the nod, although with Sean Penn also missing out as well, this rule-of-thumb needs to be re-thought. Denzel Washington, playing a morally-challenged cop, however, came from last position to pip everyone else at the post showing that the pre-Oscar awards by every guild under the sun and every city's critic circle can't always be a reliable guide. Halle Berry did the very same thing in the Best Actress department by knocking off Sissy Spacek who was such a shoe-in in pole-position that she looked for a moment as if she was already pulling herself together for a dignified acceptance speech.

Although Australian lenseman Don MacAlpine missed out on an Oscar for his luscious photography on "Moulin Rouge", another Australian, Andrew Lesnie, got the award for his extraordinary work on "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring".

The other great win for Australia, was Catherine Martin's two Oscars for costume design and set decoration. In a year with such great work being done in these areas, although it was the flashy eye-catching work which won, it was certainly deserved.

The music awards didn't include Australians, but unsurprisingly John Williams' double nomination didn't add any more Oscars to his already full cabinet, and it was Howard Shore who won for his deliberately eclectic, and often delightful score, also for "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring". Supposedly the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and often that is the case with Best Film and Best Music going hand in hand. If only Celine Dion had sung the song from "A Beautiful Mind" and it had gone gold, then James Horner would have walked away with another piece of gold for his collection as a memorable tune and a Best Music Oscar also often go together as well. It is uncertain at this stage what the majority of soundtrack collectors think of his music by itself, but it is without doubt one Horner's most understated scores, and has a great deal of empathy for the subject matter.

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